This spring BESA hosted our annual Biomedical Engineering Alumni Career Panel, bringing together a group of BMEGG alumni in various industry roles to share their professional journeys with current students. The event, held virtually via Zoom, provided a unique platform for students to gain insights into diverse career paths after graduate school.
Eden Winslow, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the BMEGG, won first place at the 2026 UC Davis Grad Slam Semi-Final on April 3, earning a $5,000 prize.
Last week 5 of our outstanding alumni returned (virtually) to share their career journeys with current BMEGG students. We are grateful for their investment in the continued success of the BMEGG program and students.
Thank you to everyone who attended, presented, judged, and participated in the BMEGG Student Research Symposium on May 12. I would especially like to thank Christal Wintersmith, Sophie Orr, and Ben Mattison for all of their hard work organizing this event. All of the sessions were excellent, and the “BME IN SPACE!” panel was a lot of fun.
Congratulations to the winners of the Best Oral, Poster, and SciCom Video Awards:
Leora Goldbloom-Helzner, BME Ph.D. Candidate under the mentorship of Professor Aijun Wang, and Abby Niesen, BME Ph.D. Candidate under the mentorship of Professor Maury Hull, were recently selected as fellows of the UC Davis Professors for the Future Program for 2022-2023.
This competitive program provides outstanding Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars with leadership-development opportunities and a $3000 stipend. The 2022-2023 cohort will engage in the following activities:
Nkechinyere Chidi-Ogbolu, Ph.D. Candidate in BMEGG, recently completed her term as a member of the Chancellor’s Graduate & Professional Student Advisory Board. Nkechi shares, “The board as a whole forms subcommittees to tackle different issues faced by graduate students on campus. Those issue then get related back to the Chancellor and with our suggested solutions. We get feedback from the Chancellor on the most feasible options and then start to work on implementation.
UC Davis BMEGG Ph.D. Students Brent Weyers, Amy Becker, Oybek Kholiqov, Justin Migacz, and Xiangnan Zhou journeyed with UC Davis colleagues to Jena, Germany to participate in a Summer School on Clinical Biophotonics. The trip was funded under a grant that Dr. Laura Marcu and Dr. Juergen Popp (Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology) co-wrote to promote collaboration in clinical biophotonics between UC Davis and the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology.
